Chasing the Dragon in Skyrim

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We take a three hour tour of the game's main quest.

By Steven Hopper

Along with Charles's impressions of a few different elements of Skyrim, I was also given a three-hour look at the game. Whereas they opted to check out a couple of different elements of the game, I instead took the main route, and went through some of the game's early main quest missions.

While I won't divulge much of the game's storyline (I'm not that cruel), we will say that the region of Skyrim has had a really big problem with dragons lately. While they haven't been seen in a very long time (they were all but unheard of during the days of Oblivion), a few areas in Skyrim have been besieged by the winged creatures. But before we took one on for ourselves, we checked out some of the early missions that helped us to get our feet wet in the vast world of Skyrim.

We began our missions in the game innocently enough, talking to a brother and sister looking to get a special item back that was stolen from them by a group of bandits known to inhabit a place called Bleak Falls Barrow. Working my way through the dungeon I find the leader has been captured by a giant spider. I rescue him in exchange for his word that he'll surrender the stolen item. Of course, he reneges, forcing me to chase him down and kill him to get it back. I continue working my way through the dungeon to find my way out, battling undead warriors, solving a few beginner-level environmental puzzles and eventually returning to the item's rightful owners.

My journey continued at a castle in dire need of assistance. The denizens of the castle were up in arms about a potential dragon sighting close to the area, and I was drafted onto the team tasked with finding this dragon and defeating him. As we set out from the castle to hunt down the dragon, fear surrounds our group; no one has seen a dragon and no one has any idea what to expect from the upcoming fight. It doesn't take long before the dragon, Mirmulnir, descends upon our group and begins attacking.

Battling the dragon was a stressful, confusing, and ultimately awesome experience. My team of NPCs and I were investigating a sighting of the creature at a watchtower outside of a nearby castle, when suddenly the beast swooped down and began blazing my companions with his fire breath. He would touch down for a few brief moments, unload a firestorm, then immediately take to the skies and circle us like a hungry shark. In a deep, booming voice the dragon would taunt my fellow warriors and I, sometimes in an unrecognizable dragon language and other times in plain English (with what sounded like a thick Slavic accent).

The fight took place in the middle of the night, with only scattered stars and the moon giving us some light for the battle. It became easy to lose the dragon as he'd circle our group, disappearing from sight as the watchtower would obstruct our view; the very object we had been sent to protect had become an obstacle. We struggled for higher ground, but the creature was relentless in his assault.

Often dropping into view before I had a chance to draw an arrow, the screen would go black following his flame attack, leaving me struggling to sprint off in any direction to get clear of him. Trying to take shots at him in midair was almost as fruitless, and we had to keep to higher ground and be constantly moving in order to avoid his onslaught.

Finally, after we had pumped enough arrows into the creature, he fell. The flesh was quickly burnt away from his corpse, leaving only a huge skeleton where a magnificent beast had once lay. Then, it happened. My character became infused with a brand new ability, the Dragon Shout, something that only a few notables (mainly the line of Emperor Tiber Septim himself) had been able to perform. It was clear to all that I was no normal warrior.

Fighting dragons in Skyrim is a very intense experience, one I would liken to playing through a D-Day sequence in a World War II shooter. It can be tough to tell where the attack is coming from, and you'll fire arrows blindly at first before you actually figure out the pattern to defeating them. However, once you take down your first one, you'll be addicted.